


I Feel a Sin Coming On

by UnchartedHemispheres



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Sharing Clothes, Slow Burn, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21901216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnchartedHemispheres/pseuds/UnchartedHemispheres
Summary: David and Julia unexpectedly share clothes - then find themselves wondering if they should be sharing more than that.Starts just after the Andrew Marr interview from 1x01 and continues on from there.
Relationships: David Budd/Julia Montague
Comments: 25
Kudos: 110
Collections: LavenderBudd Fic Exchange





	I Feel a Sin Coming On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LavenderandLouisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderandLouisa/gifts).



> LavenderBudd Christmas fic for LavenderandLouisa, who asked for "Falling for each other instead of an established relationship", "New scenes or settings" and "Slow Burn".
> 
> Slow burn is a tad difficult in a one shot, so this has ended up being a multi-chapter thing, which, considering that I seem to be unable to write short things, isn't the worst thing in the world. The remaining chapters will follow in the next few days!

_I feel a sin coming on_  
_I feel a right that's about to go wrong_  
_I got a shiver down to the bone_  
_I feel a sin coming on_

****

The fabric felt unfamiliar against her skin, the sharply ironed cotton irritating her with every move she made. She was used to silk and cashmere - soft, pliable textiles moving and flowing _with_ her body, not _against_ it. This heavily starched, hard garment poked at her, bothered her and constantly got in her way. She’d been annoyed at it within a mere five minutes, having to keep herself from pulling at the uncomfortable collar scratching her neck. The bottom of the shirt kept bunching up around her waist, and the sleeves were too large for the arms of her blazer, constantly wrinkling into large folds that rubbed against her skin.

Julia had never expected her stoic new PPO to offer his shirt to her - he seemed polite, friendly, even - but she didn’t think he would care enough to save her ass for a public appearance. He hadn’t even hesitated - assessed the situation with his usual sweeping glance, checking both Rob’s and Chanel’s clothing in the process - and must have then come to the conclusion that only his shirt would do the job. And had promptly offered it to her without hesitation, undressing immediately and saving her from a public embarrassment. She’d have had to cancel the appearance at the last minute after already having been announced, and it’d have led to a great amount of speculation (and possibly Schadenfreude) amongst the press and her peers.

Instead she went on air wearing her PPO’s sharply ironed shirt. The situation had been rather strange, the two of them alone in the green room, quite literally swapping clothes. He’d turned away immediately ( _take note, Rob_ , she thought) and given her the privacy she’d needed, but he’d still been right there when she took off her jacket and silk top and stood there in the cold studio in nothing but her bra and trousers. She’d been able to sense him behind her, the bulk of his body visible just out of the corner of her eye. The shirt had been warm when he’d handed it over, and it had smelled vaguely of his aftershave, a scent she’d come to recognise and expect in the mornings, although would have never thought to experience this closely.

When he’d taken off the garment she’d caught a glimpse of his naked arms - strong, muscular arms that looked ready to grab, to maim - or to embrace, lift, pull closer. Those arms might feel quite nice wrapped around one’s waist, pulling one in tight and close. And those hands, perhaps they’d feel quite pleasant against one’s skin, sliding and pulling, caressing, then drifting lower….She’d firmly stopped herself from continuing that line of thought and had turned away from David Budd with a small shake of her head and an amused smile at herself. She’d noticed that her new PPO was an exceptionally attractive man, but she was usually immune to any and all men, her body having long given up on that train of thought after years of accidental, unplanned celibacy. Of course it would pipe up now, letting her know that it was still there, tempting her brain with an idea that was so ridiculous and far-fetched, she found herself silently chuckling at herself. The very thought of engaging in anything but polite small talk with her protection officer was absolutely laughable. Although she did have to admit that being constantly enveloped in the smell of his cologne did prove somewhat of a distraction.

The rest of her day hadn’t gone any better than the Andrew Marr disaster - a continuos rushing around between the studio, number ten, the office, back to back meetings and multiple other urgent issues that had to be taken care of. In between all this she’d simply had no time to dig out the emergency outfit she kept at the office and change out of sergeant Budd’s annoying shirt - instead she still found herself wearing it, just after 5pm, in the car on the way to her flat. PS Budd wasn’t faring any better - Chanel, incompetent as usual, had been unable to procure him a new shirt and he’d spent the entire day in nothing but his vest and undershirt, his jacket carefully buttoned over the top. She doubted anybody had noticed - with the exception of a few of her younger female members of staff, nobody usually spared the PPO assigned to her a second glance.

She’d been so incredibly busy all day, she hadn’t managed to open a single one of the reports that had flooded her desk during the previous few days, all of which she was supposed to be caught up on by the next morning. She knew she had hours of reading ahead of her - the car ride home seemed as good a point to start as any other. The first document she opened was the latest update on 1/10, and within a mere few lines, the name “David Budd” caught her eye at the top of the page.

Of course, the sergeant now sharing the car with her had been there, too - saving the day once again, protecting a train full of innocent civilians. She stopped reading to regard the man sitting in the seat in front of her thoughtfully. Was this his M/O? Was he looking for moments to be the hero, save the day, or did he just happen to be in the right (or wrong?) place at the right time? Why had he lent her his shirt in the first place? Was it simply an unexpectedly friendly gesture - or was PS Budd playing at something? Trying to get into her good graces, impress her, make himself invaluable so that eventually he could ask her for a favour here, a favour there? That was usually how these things went - she’d seen it all in her many years of public service and was hardly surprised at anything these days. People were easily swayed by power and what it could do for them. As she focused her gaze at the back of her PPO’s skull, trying to see inside, to see through, she couldn’t help but silently wish that PS Budd, of all people, would manage to surprise her.

****

Seeing his principal in his own shirt had to be one of the strangest experiences of David’s career as a PPO so far - he’d never meant to find himself in this position. There had been a situation, he’d assessed it, identified the solution and then carried out the task required. It really had been no different from any of the other problems he dealt with on a day to day basis - be it an unexpected diversion of a route, an unfamiliar building to be secured or a new team member needing vetted - so he’d simply followed his usual process and done his job. Until he found himself alone in a room with his half naked principal behind him.

He hadn’t realised until that moment that he’d grossly overstepped the usual boundaries of the entirely professional relationship between PPO and principal. He’d been standing there, shirtless, putting his suit jacket back on and had been able to hear the rustling of her clothes behind him. He could tell by the sound when the blazer came off, then the blouse, and was able to pinpoint the _exact_ moment Julia Montague was wearing nothing but her bra. Right behind him. The two of them all alone, for a few precious minutes, in a cold television studio in the middle of London. Of course, they were regularly alone, in her flat, every evening - but this was a completely different setting, a clear moment that was forbidden, inappropriate, even illicit.

A sudden and startling desire to turn around and have a look overcame him, an intense need to see for himself exactly what kind of underwear the home secretary would wear, to catch a glimpse of her naked skin, probably rippling with goose bumps in response to the cold studio air......he angrily shook his head at himself, at his own lack of professionalism and just about managed to tamp down his rebellious thoughts and remain in his position without moving. It was immediately clear to him that he’d gone too far - swapping clothes with your principal, being present while she was undressing and thinking about her half naked were definitely instances of breaking protocol. There was nothing he could have done at that point - he could hardly turn around and ask for his shirt back, telling her he’d changed his mind - but he found himself wishing he hadn’t done it.

The interview had gone alright for her, but had deeply angered him and had, once again, shown him how deeply different their political views were. He shouldn’t have been surprised at her stance, at her obvious support of conservative policies - but he found he was almost personally insulted that the principal assigned to him not only didn’t share his opinion on the damned war, but actively opposed it.

He’d spent the entire day without his shirt, silently fuming that he’d saved her ass only for her to spit out that crap about Afghanistan on national television, and couldn’t wait to finally get away from her and her Tory shite. It was only a matter of minutes now - they’d finally made it back to her flat and he was nearly done with his usual sweep. “All clear!,” he called out after inspecting her study, and could immediately hear her move out of the hallway and into the lounge. He closed the door of the room behind him and started towards the front door, when the radio in his ear came to life with a crackling sound. He could make out someone saying his name, but their voice was immediately cut off and all he could hear was interference with some broken fragments of words.

He walked quickly through the flat, pressing a finger to his ear piece, trying to find a position that would let him receive the message he was getting. The kitchen was a no-go too, but eventually he found a spot by the window in the lounge - having moved past a startled looking Julia, who had just sat down on the couch with a large folder of documents.

“Skip? Skip? Do you copy?” - Kim’s voice came out of his ear, the sound finally clear enough. He moved the curtain to the side and glanced out the window, making sure the backup vehicle with Kim and the two other constables was still outside the house.

“Yeah Kim, sorry about that - the reception in this place is shite.” He could hear Julia chuckle slightly behind him but ignored her in favour of paying attention to the next words out of the radio.

“Craddock’s been trying to call you, she wants to see you when you get back in,'' Kim continued.

“Shit,” he said, and dug out his mobile with his free hand. Three missed calls in the past few minutes. “Sorry Kim, my phone must have had no reception. I’m almost done here and will be down in a few minutes.”

“Roger that, we’ll be waiting”, came Kim’s response. He tucked his phone back into his jacket pocket and noticed, while glancing down at himself, his current state of dress - or rather, lack of dress. _Shit_. There was no way he could show up to Craddock’s office without a shirt. The amount of crap he’d get from her would be impossible, not to mention that he had absolutely no desire to explain where his shirt had gone and why. He had an inkling that his super would not look too kindly on him getting overly familiar with his principal and swapping clothes in the process. He tried to remember if he had another shirt in his locker at RASP, but he was pretty sure his dry cleaning was still at his flat, waiting for him to take it back to the office.There was really only one thing to do for it.

“I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” he said and turned to Julia, who was deep in one of her reports, “but I’m afraid I’m going to need my shirt back”.

She stopped reading once his words registered, looked down at herself, seemingly surprised to see she still had his shirt on, then put down her report on the table in front of her. “Of course,” she said distractedly, got up and started taking off her jacket, bending down to continue reading the document in front of her. He watched in disbelief as the jacket came off and her fingers moved to the top button on the collar of the shirt. When it came undone and her fingers moved straight on to the second button, he turned his back as quickly as he could, confused and slightly irritated. He’d not meant for her to take the bloody shirt off right there and then, _again_ \- it’d have done fine if she’d gone into her bedroom and handed him his shirt back after. He sighed and closed his eyes, annoyed he’d gotten stuck in another inappropriate situation, this time trying hard not to listen to what she was doing behind him.

When he opened his eyes again a few seconds later, he caught a movement just outside his line of view and immediately followed it with his eyes in alarm, thinking there was another person in the flat with them, possibly an intruder.

_Fuck_. He’d forgotten all about the glass partition between her lounge and hallway - a glass partition that now, with the light in the hall off, acted as the perfect mirror, showing him one crystal clear Julia Montague undressing right behind him. She’d gotten only a few buttons in, but her fingers were moving downwards steadily, slowly revealing small bits of skin between the sides of the shirt. It was mesmerising. She was somewhere around her collarbone now, just moving underneath now... _Look away, Budd_ , he told himself, but try as he might, he could not avert his gaze, could not stop himself from wanting to see more and more. She looked up from the document she was still trying to read and before he knew what was happening, her eyes had caught his in the reflection of the glass.

He froze on the spot, staring at Julia, who’d stopped moving immediately, her fingers suspended over the next button, and was staring right back at him with an unreadable expression on her face. He could feel himself growing incredibly hot with embarrassment and guilt, appalled at himself for ogling his principal and violating her privacy in the worst way. He opened his mouth to apologise profusely, tell her how sorry he was, how this was never going to happen again - but before he could get a single word out, before he could say anything at all - the fingers hovering above the next button started moving, stopping him in his tracks.

He watched open mouthed as Julia Montague slowly and deliberately undid the next button on his shirt, revealing a black bra strap and the beginning of the cup sides peeking out underneath the fabric. Her reflection was still holding his gaze as she moved on to the button below, continuing her way down. He stared at her, incredulous, as she opened that one too, and found himself growing even hotter, but this time for entirely different reasons. She knew he was watching and she was now making a show of it, purposefully undressing in front of him. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Julia Montague was _teasing_ him. David vaguely remembered that he was supposed to be angry at her for something, but he could not quite recall why it was so important - he could barely comprehend what was happening, so mindblowing and incredibly arousing was the whole situation. He tried to hold her gaze, to not leer at her like a horny teenager, but his eyes kept flicking down to her hands and the growing amount of exposed skin he could see. First it was just the skin beneath her neck, then her bra strap, then eventually the entire smooth expanse of her stomach was revealed.

When she got to the last button, she slowly took off the shirt and left David entirely breathless. The bra was black and pink, a mixture of lace and some shiny looking fabric, and he could barely decide where to look first, letting his eyes roam freely across the reflection of her entire upper body. She dropped the shirt on the couch, slowly picked up her jacket and shrugged back into it, pulling the sides together but not closing it. David was immediately disappointed at the end of this rather enticing display, but found himself breathless once again the very next moment. Julia picked up his shirt from the couch, took a few steps forward and then held it out towards him, saying “Your shirt, sergeant”, in a voice so low and warm, he’d never heard it out of her before. That voice was a promise and an invitation all at once, a call that his body immediately responded to.

He turned, hypnotized and aroused, and finally came face to face with her. The reflection in the glass barely did her justice, his eyes immediately focusing on the small amount of skin he could just get a glimpse of underneath her blazer. Julia was looking straight at him, the hand with his shirt still extended, inviting him closer, and he couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t follow her invitation. David grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket and pulled it off himself, dropping it to the floor, leaving only the vest and undershirt. Her eyes immediately moved to his arms, slowly travelling up the length of the left, then crossing over and following the same path down the right arm. Her gaze was searching, appreciative, and he found he wouldn’t mind at all if she let her hands follow.

He took a few steps forward, closer than he needed to, until his chest bumped against the outstretched hand with his shirt. David took it from her slowly, swung it around his shoulders and slipped his arms into it. He was about to grab the sides and pull them in to start buttoning up, when Julia suddenly stepped towards him, reached out and pulled the shirt closed for him. He froze, unsure about what was going on now, and watched in surprise as Julia took the bottom end of the shirt and fastened the lowest button. She was so close now, he could smell her, an indescribable scent that was entirely too enticing. The half open blazer revealed a gorgeous strip of skin that he now had a fantastic view of, all the way to the top of her trousers. It wouldn’t take much to reach out and slip his hands underneath the jacket, putting them on her waist, pulling her a little closer - but he wasn’t quite sure if she would appreciate him touching her. Maybe he was only supposed to look, not touch.

He dropped his arms and watched as the home secretary slowly made her way up his body, closing one button after the next. He wished he wasn’t wearing the damn vest, so he could at least feel her hands on his skin, instead he had to make do with the light pressure he could feel every time she pulled another button through its corresponding hole. Having her so close, having her touching him like this, this powerful, usually unreadable woman who he’d never thought of in any sexual context before - it was one of the most arousing situations he’d ever been in. The way her hands moved up his body, the way she so intently focused on each button, the way she bit her bottom lip, every now and then - it all sent his body into overdrive, sent his mind reeling, left him wanting so much more. He found himself wondering what she was going to do once she got to the last button, the one right underneath his neck. Would she move on, continue touching him? Would she move away, stopping altogether? He shifted a bit closer to her, until he could feel her legs against his, waiting with baited breath to see how she’d react. She didn’t back away - instead he felt the slight pressure of her responding to his movement, felt her push back against him -

“Skip? You done up there?”

He jumped about a mile high at the voice right in his ear, his heart missing an entire beat at the shock of someone so rudely and suddenly interrupting. He looked around wildly for a moment, terrified someone had caught him in this illicit situation with his principal, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, until he realized it’d been Kim through the radio.

“Sorry Kim, got held up. On my way down in a second!” he managed to respond without, he hoped, sounding too out of breath. His gaze found Julia, who’d immediately moved away from him and now had her back to him, apparently hastily closing her blazer. He looked down at himself, spotting the few remaining open buttons and quickly did them up, then ripped his rolled up tie out of his trouser pocket and fastened it around his neck.

The spell was irrevocably broken, the magic gone, the thrum of his body fading into the background beneath concerns, worries and a sense of awkwardness that had quickly replaced the thrilling tension in the room. How was he supposed to continue now? Just leave? Say goodbye? What was the right thing to do here? Julia still had her back turned to him, her hand raking through her hair, studiously ignoring him.

David picked up his jacket from the floor and cleared his throat suggestively, all but forcing her to turn around and finally look at him. Her arms were folded across her chest, shielding her naked skin from view, and she did not look pleased at all. He had no idea what to say.

“You should go,” she said, that low, sexy voice from earlier replaced by her usual, clipped business tone. He regarded her for a few more seconds, but her expression was unreadable, hard and defensive, her walls back up, her mask back on.

“Ma’am”, he said, as politely as he could muster, and turned to leave, with his heart still pounding and his body still reeling from the experience of the past few minutes.

****

Julia was appalled at herself. She could not explain what had possessed her to not only accept the strange tension that had been present between them all day, but acknowledge it and _play into it_. She’d caught the sergeant’s stare in the mirror, the way he was ogling her, the hungry look in his eyes that she got a momentary glimpse of. And instead of ignoring it, accepting the apology that was surely forthcoming and getting them firmly back on solid, well defined, professional ground - she’d felt her body respond to him, had lost her head and taken it further. Much further than she could have ever imagined. She’d been surprised and flattered by David’s attention, a much younger man so obviously, if accidentally, demonstrating that he was interested - but that was no reason to propel them headfirst into the most inappropriate of situations, vastly overstepping the bounds of acceptable behaviour. She was embarrassed, mortified, unsure how to proceed from here - they’d gone so far, she didn’t know if it was possible to pull back and return to a normal, professional working relationship. Of course she had absolutely no interest in engaging in anything _but_ a professional relationship with her PPO.

It was her own fault for ignoring and ultimately silencing her body’s needs. She’d buried them under paperwork, political advancements and less than four hours of sleep at night, and eventually the regular pangs of desire became less frequent until they faded completely. She couldn’t even remember the last time a man had touched her (with the exception of Rob’s unwelcome advances), so unimportant was it to her. She’d been uninterested, ignored all men, forgotten that they existed for purposes other than advancing or hindering her political career. But now her skin was tingling, her heart was beating improperly fast and her brain would not stop replaying the image of David Budd, standing so close, drinking her in as she fastened his shirt. The scent of him. The feel of his vest rising and falling beneath her hands at each breath he took. The way he looked at her so intently.

_Fuck_ , she thought, as an uninvited image of her PPO firmly wedged between her legs invaded her brain. She could not do this, was not going to allow herself to even _think_ down this path. David Budd was her protection officer - nothing more. Simply a man assigned to keep her safe. She had reports to read, laws to get through parliament, a country to run. She’d managed to ignore her body’s needs for years on end, she was not going to suddenly give into it now and potentially ruin everything she’d worked so hard for.

Julia pushed the thought of one David Budd from her mind, sat back down on the couch and returned to the budget statement she’d been reading, firmly ignoring the light throbbing between her legs.


End file.
